Florian did not try to sleep that night. He didn’t go to bed and in his silent house what he had been separated from for so long seemed tonight more than he had written down. Miss Dunlop’s blouse was pink, a touch of henna transformed her hair. The pale, stretched features of Yu Zhang lost their solemnity in a smile. The Wing Commander had experienced gaol. An injury, not yet healed, was vivid on the forehead of the boy at the gravel pits. The old teacher’s nightly footsteps were the footsteps of a child whose fate she dared not think about. Life wasn’t worth living, Olivia whispered.
Reading and rereading the scraps he had given up on, Florian did not readily conclude that time, in passing, had brought perception, only that his curiosity was stirred by the shadows and half-shadows imagination had once given him, by the unspoken, and what was still unknown. He added nothing to what was written, only murmuring occasionally a line or word that might supply an emphasis or clarify a passage.
But in the early morning, standing at the water’s edge while in vain he scanned the sky for the bird that no longer came, he felt exhilarated, as if something had happened to him that he didn’t entirely know about, or know about at all. This feeling was still there when he returned to the house, while he made coffee and toasted bread, and gave his dog her food. It was there when, later in the morning, he lay down to sleep. He slept all day, and woke to it.
21
Ellie had not been to the gate-lodge since before the day they had climbed up to the corrie lakes at Gortalassa. It was a busy time of year, made more so by helping at the Corrigans’ harvest: it wasn’t as easy as it had been to get away.
Her low spirits at Gortalassa had not revived, although they did a little when, behind the loose stone in the wall at the ruins, she found a note that gave directions of how to get to Shelhanagh House. Come any day you can. Come any time, the message was, on the back of a map, in handwriting she had not known before. The ease with which all this happened - the note written, the directions given, the map drawn, his wanting her to come to the house he talked so much about - gave Ellie more than hope, restoring something at least of what had been taken from her on the slopes of Gortalassa. It had not before been suggested that she should make the journey he suggested now, and she wondered if it could be that for some reason everything was suddenly different. That the sale of the house had fallen through. That the people buying it had made a mistake or, when they calculated, didn’t have the money. Months, maybe a year, might pass while the unsold house kept him in Ireland. She had thought she might never hear from him again. But she had and he wanted her to come to him.
Thursday I’ll come. The afternoon is better.
She left her note where his had been.
To arrange the loan with which he hoped to buy Gahagan’s field Dillahan made one of his rare weekday visits to Rathmoye. In Mr Hassett’s small private office he presented the facts and Mr Hassett said he didn’t think two thousand pounds was going to break the bank. Beneath his small moustache he fleetingly displayed the smile familiar to borrowers when he agreed to make a loan. Dillahan nodded his gratitude.
‘A pity to pass it by,’ he said.
‘It’s always a pity to pass good land by, Mr Dillahan.’
‘The trouble is, one day he’d be on about offers for it, the next he’d be talking about clearing and draining.’
‘He’s neglected it, has he?’
‘Well, yes.’
‘The older a man is the harder it is for him to part with what he has. And the more reason he should. Not that selling out isn’t hard on any man, never mind his years.’
‘Gahagan has a fair bit left, all the same.’
Dillahan stood up. There was a golf cup on the desk and Mr Hassett saw him looking at it. A bit of luck, he said, the Rathmoye Bankers’ Prize. He held the door of his small private office open. The two men shook hands and Dillahan passed through the main offices, out into the sunshine of the Square. He looked to see if Ellie had come back from her shopping. One of the back doors of the Vauxhall was open, a basket and two bags still on the ground beside where she stood. The mad old Protestant was talking to her.
‘They went because of it,’ Orpen Wren said. ‘The St Johns didn’t have control over their sons.’
Ellie nodded. She read her list again, making sure she’d got everything.
‘The last steward they had at Lisquin was Mr Boyle and the mistress had himself and myself brought to her little room. “Close the door,” she said, and I did and Mr Boyle didn’t say a word. Men coming to the house looking for their women, she said. Wives or daughters, it never mattered. The Rakes of Mallow weren’t in it, she said. “Oh, worse,” she said. “Worse than that any day.”
‘The master had taken to his bed for the shame of it, and she came out with it then: that Elador was gone off with a woman. “All I know is the running of the house,” she said. “I can’t be devising stratagems.” Her two little girls were a few years old and Jack maybe fourteen. What good was she for more besides that, was what she was asking us, and Mr Boyle said he’d scour all Ireland. He’d take a stableman with him and they’d go into every inn and hotel. They’d search the two of them out if it took them a six-month. He wouldn’t spare Elador, he promised her that. He’d have it clear and plain with Elador that he must give the woman back where she belonged. Mr Boyle said to the mistress, “Ma’am, I’d maybe have to thrash it out of Elador.” He said he’d need her permission for laying hands on her boy, and the master’s permission, because he’d be frightened of the law. She said it again that her husband was in his bed. She was beside herself, she didn’t remember telling us before. “Mr Wren will write it down,” Mr Boyle said. “Mr Wren will write it down that Elador came back chastened to Lisquin. Mr Wren will put the date to it. And write it down that permission was given.”’
Ellie tried to detect from her husband’s gait if he’d been allowed the loan, but she couldn’t tell. A shawled woman held out a hand and when he’d reached into his pockets he dropped a coin into it.
‘Her heart was broken for Lisquin, Mr Boyle said. Her heart was broken for the St Johns brought low by a son. “It’s in this family always,” she said, and there were tears on her face. For a long time already it was in the family, she said, one generation to the next. “Let me go, ma’am,” Mr Boyle begged her. “Let the stableman and myself make an end of the unworthiness of the whole thing.” If afterwards the story would be told, Mr Boyle said, if afterwards the children of the St Johns would hear before they became men of how Elador St John had been thrashed in Letterkenny or Arklow or by the roadside in County Clare, how he and his woman were hunted down like two wild creatures by dogs - if the children would be told the story, that would be an end to it for ever. And when himself and the stableman went they found the two in Portumna by the river, in lodgings where spalpeens would stay, or labouring men on the repair of a road. They gave the woman back to her husband, and Elador St John was sent out of Ireland. But one night, when years again had passed, a farmer came to Lisquin with a gun, which was taken off him or he’d have shot Jack dead. The day following there was no one in the household that didn’t know the St Johns would go.’
His eyes had become steely and intense. One hand gripped the top of the car’s open door. All during his long monologue Ellie had had the impression that he was trying to say something else and couldn’t manage to because he couldn’t find the words. He asked her if she understood.
‘Lisquin’s gone this long time, Mr Wren,’ she said. ‘The St Johns with it.’